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A New Wave of Scientific Teaching
Summary: Jo Handelsman studies the communication networks of microbial communities. Her HHMI project involves initiatives to improve research experiences for undergraduates, including those from groups underrepresented in the sciences; to train biologists to teach and mentor with the same rigor they apply to research; and to develop materials that engage students actively in learning biology.
HHMI PROJECT SUMMARY
Original Project (2002 grant)
The 2002 grant supported several initiatives to make science more accessible and exciting to students. We created the HHMI Undergraduate Research Scholars program to improve the research experience for students from groups underrepresented in the sciences. Each year 6 to 10 outstanding students, most of whom are members of ethnic minorities, are selected from a nationwide pool to work in labs at the University of Wisconsin (UW)–Madison. I meet weekly with the students as a group to discuss their research, their interactions with mentors, and careers in biology. These meetings, dubbed the "No Dumb Questions" seminar, provide a safe forum for students to raise issues of concern.
We also created a conceptual framework for pedagogy, "scientific teaching," in which scientists bring the same creativity and rigor to their teaching as they bring to their research. This concept guided the development and implementation of two teacher training initiatives: one for graduate students and postdocs and the other for faculty. In the HHMI Teaching Fellows Program, 10 to 15 graduate students and postdocs per year learn to teach and mentor through course work and practical experience. Each fellow takes Teaching Biology, a course that covers the theoretical and practical aspects of biology education. Course instructors model the core practices of scientific teaching—active engagement of diverse students, regular assessment of learning gains, and redesign of classroom strategies based on the data collected—and the fellows build a foundation of pedagogical principles and experiment to develop their own teaching styles. Fellows then choose to specialize in either classroom teaching or mentoring. The classroom teaching practicum, which spans the academic year, gives fellows the chance to develop, teach, evaluate, and revise a peer-reviewed "teachable unit" for an introductory biology course. The units are disseminated via the Web, presentations, and journal articles. Fellows who choose to pursue training in mentorship take the eight-session Wisconsin Mentoring Seminar, in which they learn to communicate effectively, consider issues of human diversity, and cover other important aspects of being a good mentor. The seminar, which is the basis for our book Entering Mentoring: A Seminar to Train a New Generation of Scientists, has been implemented at numerous universities.
The second teacher training initiative, the annual HHMI-National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology, targets faculty from research universities. Each year approximately 40 faculty are selected to participate in five-day workshop in which they develop instructional materials for introductory biology courses. Instructors present proven approaches to classroom teaching and assessment through presentations that model the techniques being taught so that participants experience them as students. Participants also learn about the Wisconsin Mentoring Seminar and return to their campuses ready to teach it.
Project Update (2006 grant)
I plan to develop three distinct teaching initiatives. A "cohort model" for summer research programs will attempt to ease the transition of undergraduates who are members of minority groups to graduate school at predominantly white universities. The hypothesis is that minority students who start graduate school with a cohort of students from the same undergraduate school will be more likely to flourish in a university that has a predominantly white student body. The study will be conducted with African American students, but it is transferable to other minority groups. We will recruit students in groups of three to six from Howard University, Xavier University, Louisiana State University, and the University of Maryland–Baltimore County to participate in UW–Madison summer research programs and then track their success when in graduate school.
The second initiative is a course on how human diversity influences the way students learn and are treated by their instructors. The goal is twofold: to educate future teachers about the role diversity plays in the classroom and to create teaching materials that will help instructors address diversity issues in biology courses. Topics will include cognitive diversity and gender and racial diversity. The third initiative involves the development of materials for a capstone undergraduate seminar, Science and Technology in Society. The course will expose seniors to controversies in biomedical science and teach graduate students and postdocs to design and implement inquiry-based "teachable units" of instructional materials. Ideas and materials developed in these initiatives will be tested and refined locally and then rapidly made available through presentations, articles, books, and the Web.
RESEARCH SUMMARY
My lab studies the communication networks within and among microbial communities and between microbial communities and their host organisms. Our research on Bacillus cereus led to the discovery of zwittermicin A, an antibiotic of diverse activities, including inhibition of oomycete pathogens of plants and potentiation of the activity of an insecticidal toxin. Study of zwittermicin A stimulated my interest in antibiotics and led me to the microbial community of the soil, historically the richest source of antibiotics used in human medicine. The vast majority (greater than 99 percent) of soil bacteria are resistant to culturing, and their antibiotics remain inaccessible by traditional means. Believing that the uncultured bacteria of the soil contain a treasure trove of medicinal chemistry, my lab applies an approach we call metagenomics, which provides access to the chemistry of uncultured bacteria. Metagenomics is the analysis of the collective genomes of uncultured organisms, accomplished by extracting DNA directly from the soil and cloning it into a culturable organism. Analysis of metagenomic libraries has led to the discovery of new genes, proteins, and small molecules, including new antibiotics.
In addition, we study the structure and function of the microbial community that resides in the caterpillar gut. This simple community is an excellent model for more complex gut microbiota because the insect gut can be readily manipulated. We have shown that the gut microbiota determine the outcome of infection with an insect pathogen. We are currently exploring what makes a community robust or resistant to invasion and what makes an invader able to breach the community barrier.
Last updated March 2007
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